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The past few days have been pretty eventful, but eventful in ways that weren't terribly conducive to blogging...

Sunday, the day I came home, Oscar went missing. We spent most of the afternoon and some of the evening unsuccessfully looking for him all over the neighborhood. I can't tell you how relieved I was when we found him waiting on the front step the next morning. Here's a picture of the little fellow :o)



Monday night, the Jennys came over for a sleepover. We did geeky things like playing text-twist (apparently as popular at MIT as it is in Canaday B24), watched Alfie (doable lead, unwatchable movie) & In Good Company (cute lead, great movie), talked about nothing in particular... This morning, I made a mocha so sweet that I could barely detect the coffee base anymore. Jenny said she still preferred Frappuccinos. ::sniff::

I've spent most of today reading and getting acquainted with my new setup. Got about 2/3 of the way through Dubliners and read a bit of Rimbaud. I'm not sure if I'll read any more of the latter...I don't remember/know enough French to understand the original text, and it feels kind of like cheating (or at best pointless) to read translations. Right now, I'm just finishing up random books that I started at school but, one of these days, I'll have to draw up a list of stuff I want to read this summer. And a list of classical pieces I need to be familiar with by next year. And maybe some other stuff, too. I love lists.



The new espresso setup has proved to be a bigger challenge than I originally expected. It's really difficult figuring out what to adjust with two new and unfamiliar variables; in hindsight, I probably should have dialed in the mazzer with the gaggia, and then switched the expobar for the gaggia. Anyway, it's a moot point, because I've been pounding out decent-to-good shots since Monday evening.

I'm currently using black cat, the only fresh blend available at our local Whole Foods. As you might know (if you are one of two particular people on the face of this earth), I've never once pulled a really good straight shot of Black Cat before, at least on my Gaggia. Yet somehow, I really like the way this blend is coming through on my Expobar... (weird, cuz I can't imagine that this is one of those finicky blends chris tacy was talking about on his most recent post)



Brief notes on Intelligentsia's roast-dating system:
It's idiotic. Their bags display roast date in terms of the nth day of the year. For instance, February 2nd 2003 = 03 033. I can understand why Starbucks or Folgers might want to obscure their roast date, but Intelligentsia?!



Brief tasting notes: Intelligentsia Black Cat (on an Expobar Pulsar), 17 g double
Roasted 05 147
I don't enjoy (nor have I ever enjoyed) the first sip of a Black Cat shot. It's too intensely and one-dimensionally spicy. What follows, though, is "abundant recompense." (no, that's a lie. I just wanted to say "abundant recompense." Again. Can you guess what it's from?) The crema is golden-brown, dense, composing maybe 50% of the shot. After that, lots of semisweet chocolate, punctuated with vanilla and anise. The aftertaste, which lasts for a good 30 minutes after the last sip, is sweeter than the shot itself and reminiscent of kettle corn & butterscotch.



my hot new nuova point cups (identical, i think, to the original la marz's)